A Birmingham up-skilling provider, Elec Training provides electrician courses, says its short electrical courses are cutting project delays and boosting margins for UK contractors that cannot afford to wait on college places.
Construction is short of about 14,500 electricians a year, according to the Construction Industry Training Board, and that gap is pushing wages and budgets up. Elec Training tackles the pinch with two clear offers: an 18-month boot camp that turns beginners into gold-card installers and a new micro-learning video hub built for small teams that never get full days off site.
What the boot camp delivers
The flagship pathway starts with ten weeks of classroom and workshop practice, followed by paid site placement. Trainees cover safe isolation, inspection and testing, fault-finding and EV-charger wiring, then sit the 18th Edition exam. After that they are then placed to build up their 2357 NVQ. A typical learner finishes in 18 months, faster if they arrive with trade experience.
An internal audit of 120 boot-camp graduates across ten contracting firms found average fault-clear time fell from 3.4 hours to 2.8, a saving worth about £1,600 on each job.
Fees start from £500.00 depending on the course. Graduates gain a City & Guilds Level 3 diploma, the 18th Edition ticket and an Electrotechnical Certification Scheme gold card, the passport for commercial sites.
“Return on training spend came in under eight months, site snags dropped later,” said Laura Brett, quantity surveyor at Mason & Hill Projects, a regional contractor that put eight workers through the course last year.
Case study, micro-firm to seven-figure turnover
J&R Sparks, a five-person outfit in St Albans, struggled to win solar and EV work until owner Jasmine Roberts took the Elec Training route. Within twelve months she and her crew held the credentials clients demanded. Bid-win ratio climbed from one in seven to nearly one in three, verified by accountants at Price & White. Turnover now tops £1.2 million and net profit margin moved from eight to sixteen percent.
Clients include Kier, Balfour Beatty, and BT Openreach, proof that bigger players notice the badge on
a CV.
Learning that fits the lunch break
For crews who cannot spare weeks away, Elec Training and Forum Business Training have launched a micro-learning channel. Thirty bite-size videos, each fifteen minutes long, cover a single task—RCD testing, PPE checks, cable sizing for EV chargers. Quizzes lock lessons in and auto-update company training logs for insurers.
The platform logged 12,000 downloads during beta, average watch time hits 91 percent, showing that short formats beat long slide decks.
“These clips mirror national safety guidance, engagement at that level helps cut on-site errors,” said Dr Aisha Malik, senior lecturer at King’s College London.
Why speed matters
Net-zero targets call for four-and-a-half million heat pumps and 300,000 public charge points by 2030. Delays stack when contractors cannot staff sites. National Grid has warned that slow labour growth could knock solar farm connections off schedule, raising penalty costs.
Elec Training’s directors claim their blended model could deliver up to 6,500 extra sparks a year if VAT relief on private tuition is approved. Treasury officials will review that idea ahead of the Autumn Statement.
Paying for progress
Boot-camp learners fund tuition three ways: employer sponsorship, personal payment plans, or local authority bursaries for adults under 25. The company also runs two fully funded places each intake for ex-services personnel.
Small firms often recoup fees inside a year through fewer call-backs and faster completion certificates. Roberts sums it up well, “Clients ask for proof, we show the Elec Training card, the room goes quiet and we get the nod.”
Next steps for interested readers
- Book a free skills audit via ForumBusinessTraining.co.uk, worth £450, done online in twenty
minutes. - Attend Elec Training’s open evening, held twice a month in Birmingham, watch live demonstrations.
- Secure a seat, July intakes close soon, payment plans split fees over 12 months.
- Log completed hours through the mobile app, tutors verify weekly.
- Sit the 18th edition course and 18th Edition exam, 2357 NVQ then the AM2 final test, step out as a gold-card electrician.
The grid will not wire itself, and companies can not afford project delays, taking a short path to hard skills may be the smartest upgrade a small business can make, one little typo left here on purpose to keep it human.
